Sunday, February 27, 2005

Firefox 1.0.1; Thunderbird 1.0.1

Firefox 1.0.1 (cross-platform open-source web browser) and Thunderbird 1.0.1 (ditto mail client) are now out. Informal G4 optimized builds (also good for G5) have been released: Firefox by "powerbook"; Thunderbird 1.0.1 by "ozjason".

Monday, February 14, 2005

DjVu plugin (2nd try)

DjVu is a highly efficient graphic compression algorithm that is in use by a number of libraries (notably our own Jewish National and University Library) for serving digitized content. A Mac OS X compatible browser plugin exists: it works fine with Safari. A bundled "DjVu plugin host" application allows opening DjVu documents outside browser environments: The developer version of Firefox I am using apparently cannot handle it, so I configured the "plugin host" to be Firefox's helper for DjVu documents.

Some examples on the web are here. A good one to play with is this illuminated 14th century Hebrew manuscript. And don't forget to have a look at the DjVu digital library.

People wishing to experiment with creating DjVu content should have a look at any2DjVu. Academics and other scholars wishing to see their own collections digitized in DjVu may be interested in bib2web.djvuzone.org.

DjVu plugin

DjVu is a highly efficient graphic compression algorithm that is in use by a number of libraries (notably our own Jewish National and University Library) for serving digitized content. A Mac OS X compatible browser plugin exists: it works fine with Safari. A bundled "DjVu plugin host" application allows opening DjVu documents outside browser environments: The developer version of Firefox I am using apparently cannot handle it, so I configured the "plugin host" to be Firefox's helper for DjVu documents.

Some examples on the web are here. A good one to play with is this illuminated 14th century Hebrew manuscript. And don't forget to have a look at the DjVu digital library.

People wishing to experiment with creating DjVu content should have a look at any2DjVu. Academics and other scholars wishing to see their own collections digitized in DjVu may be interested in bib2web.djvuzone.org.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Using iCal as musical alarm clock

There are various shareware utilities that allow running musical alarm clocks (so you can wake up to your favorite classical piece, pop tune, or rock track). I tried a couple such utilities, and had trouble with all of them for one reason or another. Also, since I already use iCal for calendaring, why yet another program just for week-daily alarms?

this macosxhints.com article finally answered my prayers. Executive summary:


  • generate an AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) music file from your favorite CD using
    iTunes
    change its extension from .aac or .m4a to .aiff (yes, that's actually wrong since AIFF normally is raw CD audio --- but apparently iCal plays them just fine!)
  • drop the file in the folder Library/Sounds in your home directory
  • now go to iCal, create a new event at your required alarm time, with a twist:

    • as the sound, pick the file you just selected
    • under repeat, pick "custom"
    • in the menu, pick "weekly", and cross the days on which you want it to ring
      (e.g. Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, but not Sat)
    • press OK

  • And presto!

If you do not want your alarms to show up in your day planner, create a separate calendar "Alarms" for this purpose, and check it off in the "Calendars" pane of the main "View" Panel. The alarms will still ring, but won't clutter your view.